Primary sourcePaintingc. 1830-1832

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai · c. 1830-1832

A series of landscape prints by Hokusai showing Mount Fuji from many places and seasons, made when he was in his seventies.

This series, made in his seventies, is considered Hokusai's masterpiece and the height of his career.

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Colour woodblock print of Mount Fuji with a red-brown peak streaked with white snow, under a deep blue sky filled with rows of white, layered clouds. Dark green slopes fill the lower foreground. A vertical title cartouche with printed characters sits at the upper left. — Katsushika Hokusai, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (no. 33), c. 1830-1832.

About this source

What it is

This is a series of woodblock landscape prints made by Katsushika Hokusai around 1830–1832, published by Nishimura Yohachi. The series shows Mount Fuji from different locations and weather. It includes his famous Great Wave off Kanagawa and Fine Wind, Clear Morning. Complete sets survive in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum.

Why it matters

Made at the height of Hokusai's career, the series turned landscape into a major subject in ukiyo-e prints and reflected a boom in travel in Edo-period Japan. His use of newly imported Prussian blue pigment was revolutionary, and the series later inspired European Impressionist painters.

Look closer

Why might an artist choose to show the same mountain forty-six different ways?
What does the popularity of Mount Fuji as a subject tell you about Japanese culture at the time?
How did new imported pigments change what artists could show?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Hokusai on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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Woodcut print in blue, cream and tan tones of a huge curling wave with claw-like foam fingers rising over two boats full of rowers. Small Mount Fuji appears in the distance under a pale sky. Japanese calligraphy sits in a cartouche at upper left.

Painting

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The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Katsushika Hokusai · 1830

Woodblock print page from Hokusai Manga with Japanese characters. Two men carry loads on poles over their shoulders; the man on the right carries a large hanging sack. A child carries a basket on a pole, and a crouching figure with a basket sits in the lower center beside a large basket.

Painting

Primary source

Man with Filarial Elephantiasis

Katsushika Hokusai · 1834

Woodcut print in ink on paper showing a scene at a wooden outhouse. A samurai with two swords peers out from a window of the latrine building. Outside, a bald man carries a large wooden bucket on a pole, and another man crouches in the foreground. Japanese text and a signature appear in the margins.

Painting

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Samurai Visiting a Latrine

Hokusai Katsushika · 1834

Woodblock print of a red-and-yellow rowing boat on a dark blue pond with lotus leaves. Several women in red and pink robes sit and kneel in the boat, one at the stern holding a long pole, others reaching toward the water. A green bank with bushes is at left, and a poem cartouche is at upper right.

Painting

Primary source

Women in a Rowing Boat on a Lotus Pond

Hokusai Katsushika

Woodblock print of Mount Fuji with a red-brown lower slope and snow-capped peak against a deep blue sky with streaks of white clouds. Dark blue-green forest covers the foreground. Title cartouche in the upper left.

Painting

Primary source

Fine Wind, Clear Morning

Katsushika Hokusai · c. 1830-1832

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